From Watts Up With That?

By Robert Girouard

As war rages in the Middle East and Ukraine, as missiles and drones claim new victims every day, and as the global order is threatened—with all the attendant consequences of human misery—a strange persistence haunts the comfy living rooms of certain remote corners of the West, tucked away warmly and safely from the turmoil. A segment of our elite, obsessed with the quest for carbon neutrality, seems indeed incapable of lookng away from its Excel spreadsheets to contemplate the human drama unfolding before its eyes.

In an article titled “When War Drives Up GHG Emissions” recently published in Montreal-based La Presse Plus, journalist Éric-Pierre Champagne poses the question that seemingly haunts climate alarmists: “Do armed conflicts like those in Iran, Ukraine, or Gaza drive up global greenhouse gas emissions? But is this pollution significant or marginal? In short, does war hinder our efforts to reach carbon neutrality?” In this scholarly exposé, where numerous experts are consulted, there is not a single word regarding the economic and human costs engendered by these conflicts; only carbon accounting holds any importance.

There is something deeply disconcerting, if not morally suspect, about seeing experts ponder the “carbon footprint” of an invasion or a bombardment. This attitude reveals an unprecedented derailment of reason: the elevation of a technical indicator—the CO2 molecule—to the rank of an absolute divinity, before which every other reality, even the most atrocious, must bow.

Morality demands a hierarchy of urgencies. Yet, the ideology of carbon neutrality operates a flattening of all values. How have we reached this stage of emotional anesthesia, where the survival of a nation or the agony of a civilian population is passed through the filter of greenhouse gas accounting? Prioritizing “net-zero” while the world tips into geopolitical brutality is not foresight; it is a form of narcissism totally disconnected from geopolitical realities and human suffering. It is the stubbornness of one who, seeing their house burning and their family trapped, worries about whether the fire trucks are electric.

War should be a wake-up call. It should remind us that heat, electricity, and the capacity for self-defense are not negotiable options in the name of climate virtue, but the very foundations of civilization. Even Germany, a champion of the energy transition, did not hesitate to reopen its coal mines to avoid freezing in winter, having suddenly rediscovered, through pain, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Those who continue to place decarbonization above basic security and human dignity demonstrate a lack of morality hidden behind the shroud of “science.” By refusing to see that peace and freedom are the prerequisites for any environmental policy, they condemn societies to helplessness.

The senseless quest for carbon neutrality at any cost, disconnected from the needs of ordinary people, has become an ideological drift that blinds us. It is time to denounce this indecency. A ton of carbon avoided will never be worth a life saved. A world freed from fossil fuels but enslaved or destroyed by violence is not progress; it is an ecological cemetery. True reason consists in admitting that there are realities greater, more urgent, and more sacred than the planet’s thermostat. War forces us to look horror in the face. Let us at least have the decency not to ask for its carbon footprint.